Texts & Tools

Texts & Tools

You will find here a collection of contributions of different authors sharing their ideas, views or lessons learnt during their professional development. Please feel encouraged to comment on the contributions and share your experiences on the various topics. If you would like to add your own contribution, please get in contact with us.

The beginning
NOVA’s Doctoral School (DS) launched in 2013. Without interfering with the structured PhD programs of each of the nine schools of the university, NOVA DS embraced a specific mission – to reinforce personal and professional development of PhD students and supervisors through transferable skills training.

Building a team
We started with a very simplified and flexible organizational model and with a very small team - two Coordinators, a Counselling Committee of teachers and another of students, coming
from the different schools, and a small non-academic staff team.
Three girls constitute our non-academic staff. They were recruited based on specific criteria: Competence and Flexibility (skilled people but flexible enough to be polyvalent); Creativity
(able to find solutions for unexpected situations); Boldness and teamwork capacity (able to accept challenges and to work as a supportive team). Furthermore specific and differentiated professional profiles were considered and we built our non-academic team with a specialist in Project and Quality Management, a specialist in Education and Training and a specialist in
Communication.

Growing as a projectFirst stage: From the beginning, “our” three girls accepted to contribute with their specific know-how but also to develop administrative work. At start all of them worked very close to
each other, planning activities, organizing courses, interacting with students, solving problems, collecting and treating evaluation data. Two of them were also tutors in two of the courses
offered by the school.

Present stage: After the first two years of establishing and implementing the first steps of the project, the school is in another development stage. Specific capacities of our three members
of the non-academic staff are felt as crucial. Nowadays we can think about developing specific domains and to build a more differentiated response to our students. Above all we would like to give an opportunity for the contribution of specific expertise in order to be able to offer a dynamic educational atmosphere, a sound organisational and teaching quality management system and an efficient communication process within the school and outside the school.
Furthermore the personal and professional development of our staff has become one of our priorities.

Lessons learned
As any innovation process, NOVA Doctoral School has experienced different life cycles. It was crucial to start the project with a small team. Non-academic staff was part of the team and needed to feel involved as partners. Although there are different professional profiles within the non-academic team, the initial effort to operate in an apparently undifferentiated manner contributed to build the desired team spirit.
After the first phase, training and establishing good practices are crucial to consolidate the project. This is one of the reasons why we joined the PRIDE Project.

Related

Gerald Lind describes the struggles at the University of Graz during the process of establishing the support unit to improve doctoral education "DocServices". Especially the met dissapproval by supervisors due to various reasons was striking. The DocServices team found a successful way of creating a basis of acknowledgement for a new supervisory culture within their institution.

Since 2013 Dahlem Research School has expanded its Career Development offerings in general in the frame of its Professional Development Program directed at doctoral candidates. In this context, the DRS has launched new initiatives to support careers of prospective graduates beyond academia. The following text describes the two general initiatives DRS Pro Business and DRS Pro Gründung, renamed DRS Pro Transfer in 2016 .

Being aware of the key milestones of higher education policy is essential to do a good job as a professional in doctoral education. The better you know about and understand the policy environments you work in, the more suitable and sustainable services you are able to develop

Nele Bracke from Ghent University describes the establishment of Doctoral Schools at her institution and their engagement in activities with other Flemish universities to foster future careers of their PhD students.

Stan Taylor, Margaret Kiley and Robin Humphrey have published this second edition of “A Handbook for Doctoral Supervisors”. It is not just an updated version. It is actually significantly re-worked and has also brought with it a change of authors with two new co-authors. First published in 2005, it has already served many potential - as well as established - supervisors as a source to reflect upon and improve their supervisory practice. With this new edition, the authors rightly argue that supervisors need to react to the substantial changes in doctoral education which have greatly extended the roles of supervisors.

In 2014 the University of Basel started the interdisciplinary initiative "diss.Kurs". Participants are given the opportunity to gain insights into the latest research projects of PhD students as well as general information about doctoral services at the university for people thinking of starting their PhD.

We believe in knowledge-sharing as a competitive advantage and try to achieve this with interactive webinars organised by professionals, for professionals. Our second webinar aimed at professionals who want to set up, improve or reflect on their training offers in transferable skills.

Watch the webinar with Verity Eston and Christian Dumpidak an Transferable Skills Training recorded in November 2018!

About the Association

The PRIDE-network Association aims at representing the community of Professionals in Doctoral Education within Europe and beyond.